Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

I'm amazed that so many people just use gmail (or other webmail application) and don't use a local client app on their computer. I used the VM package in Emacs to read mail for years and it was fine for me. It's still more powerful than virtually any other mail program I've seen. I could tag messages (it was called labelling) 10 years ago. When I switched to the Mac I decided to try the full experience and used Mail.app for my mail. I lost some features, but the HTML rendering was a lot better.

But I forward mail from a few accounts to gmail and use the POP interface to download mail to Mail.app. I use Mail.app to read and send mail (and it interfaces well with Address Book and Quicksilver). Some (many) people just keep all their mail on googles gmail servers and use the web interface to read and send mail. Sure it's great that they can read their mail from any connected machine (I can do that too), but they have no access to their mail unless they are online and they have no backup. Today I read that Gmail users report vanishing e-mail. 60 people lost all their mail, gone. What is your service agreement with gmail's free service? Personally I think it's crazy to not have your mail on your computer.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Ford appointed Justice John Paul Stevens to the court 31 years ago. "To Ford's credit, the selection of Stevens for the Court was widely regarded at the time as a choice made primarily upon merit, rather than political advantage -- an example that subsequent presidents have not routinely followed."

Ford as the House Republican leader tried and failed to impeach Steven's predecesor, William Douglas. "Ford's effort to remove Douglas from the Court was widely interpreted as a blatant political maneuver to retaliate for the Senate's rejection of two Richard Nixon nominees to the Supreme Court." When Douglas retired 5 years later, Ford sent him a kind letter.

Ford also in 1970 gave a speech on the House floor that defined an impeachable offense as whatever a majority of the House says it is. Basically no objective standard and allowing pure politics to rule, 25 years later it did.

I think I'm finally done with this. I went to the oral surgeon today for another checkup and things look good. No pain and barely any swelling. He doesn't want to see me again unless things get worse. There's still a hole in the back of my mouth but that takes about 2 months to close up. So now I get to make the appointment to have the filling done on the tooth in front that caused all this. :)

The TSA violated your privacy 2 years ago. "The Homeland Security Department conceded yesterday that it violated the Privacy Act two years ago by obtaining more commercial data about US airline passengers than it had announced it would." I'm not even remotely surprised, except that they admitted it (kinda).

Thursday, December 21, 2006

I heard a story on NPR this afternoon that made me kinda ill. Apparently there's a grill called Hot Tomatoes in Fells Point, Baltimore that serves cheese steaks...deep fried. I'd link to it, but they don't seem to have a web page, surprise, surprise. I've actually had a deep fried hot dog (bun and all) at a small hot dog stand in Fort Lee, NJ, but it was only once and it will never happen again. Somehow a deep fried cheese steak sounds a lot worse. Apparently they don't serve them every day, the NPR story made it seem as if because it's so bad for you.

I've also had deep fried Oreos, once. They were really really good, but you could feel your arteries hardening. They put them in some dough so they formed something like a flat donut hole and the cookie melted on the inside, so it was Oreo gooey goodness.

When Bush's administration cites national security as a reason to not release information, don't believe. The government has a history of using this claim to hide their illegal actions. Finally, documents about the FBI's investigation into John Lennon have been released and guess what, the claims were baseless. Our government spied on an innocent person for no reason and covered it up.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Yup, it's true. Except it's a Komodo Dragon. It's still impressive, just not as impressive as if it had been a mammal. "Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. Other lizards do this, but scientists only recently found that Komodo dragons do too." Apparently the eggs (which will all be male) might hatch on Christmas, what new religion would form if that happened?

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

FOX news finally reports on the government can turn your cellphone into a bug, remotely, without your knowledge story and Gizmodo doesn't believe it. Sigh it's true, and yes "that's some seriously creepy and privacy-invading business right there".

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) was elected and decided to be sworn in on the Koran since he's a Muslim. Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) sent out a letter saying how wrong this was. "I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran." It went on to say how we must prevent illegal immigration from the Muslim world (did Ellison come here illegally?, I doubt it) and what he told a student who asked him about the Koran. How do people this stupid get elected 5 times?

I finally moved to the new template format with the new Blogger Beta. Can't say I love the tool, maybe it just has some problems in Safari, but it was pretty painless and it was easy to pick something similar to what I had. The biggest difference seems to be the format of the Archives, which is more useful. Comments welcome.

Now if only Google were better about accepting comments or bug reports for their products in beta. E.g., while dragging and dropping template elements in Safari the UI got confused though the underlying template didn't seem to. I have no idea if it's similar in other browsers.

The Washington Post has an article today saying that the Joint Chiefs are unanimously opposed to sending a surge of an additional 15-30,000 troops to Iraq. Maybe they've been reading Cenk Uygur too. Maybe the new Defence Secretary could get the White House to do so too.

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based crisis monitoring group that includes several former U.S. officials, released a new Iraq Study. Apparently it says "the Iraqi government and military should not be treated as 'privileged allies' because they are not partners in efforts to stem the violence but rather parties to the conflict, it says. Trying to strengthen the fragile government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will not contribute to Iraq's stability, it adds. Iraq's escalating crisis cannot be resolved militarily, the report says, and can be solved only with a major political effort."

So I guess we have to wait till January to see just how stupid Bush can be.

Monday, December 18, 2006

This is how we treat innocent US citizens. Held for 97 days, without counsel, given a hearings with an anonymous board and not seeing most of the evidence, the army repeatedly concluded that he was a security risk, but never cited any reason why. This has to be completely illegal.

Another good post by Cenk Uygur The Democrat's Plantation Mentality. "On what planet does an extra 30,000 American troops get the Shiites and the Sunnis to stop hating each other? How many times do we have to tell these people that Iraq needs a POLITICAL SOLUTION, not a military one?" Read the article for what Reid should have said in response to the proposal.

Laura Bush commented that the media only reports the bad news from Iraq and that lots of good things are happening. When asked for examples she only listed that we're building schools. Daily Kos has the facts about that, as reported in the LA Times. "But today, across the country, campuses are being shuttered, students and teachers driven from their classrooms and parents left to worry that a generation of traumatized children will go without education. Teachers tell of students kidnapped on their way to school, mortar rounds landing on or near campuses and educators shot in front of children."

In the mean time the AP reports that Some Gitmo detainees freed elsewhere. 360 detainees were released and the AP has been able to track about 245 of them, 205 of them have been released or cleared of charges. This is a story that's easily manipulated. One view is just because they are free doesn't mean they aren't dangerous, and another is that we arrested innocent people and made enemies. In fact the AP story says: "Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter." One of the lawyers said just the fact of their release proves Rumsfeld's characterization of them as "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth." The rule of law in this country says people are innocent until proven guilty, Guantanamo seems to skirt that law too.

Blood Diamond tells the story of two men in Sierra Leone, one a fisherman, one a smuggler. Djimon Hounsou plays Solomon Vandy a father of 3 who early in the film sees his village destroyed by rebels and is taken into slavery to mine diamonds. He finds a large pink diamond and at personal peril, hides it, and narrowly esapes through a series of events that are a little to coincidental. These early scenes of random and brutal violence while not gory, are pretty harrowing.

Vandy ends up in a prison which is also holding a Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a Rhodesian mercenary on smuggling charges. He hears rumor of the diamond and views it as his ticket out of Africa. He partners with Vandy with the promise of helping him find his family. They later team up with American journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) who is trying to write a story about conflict diamonds but can't get enough facts to do so.

The plot is a basic quest, with enough turns of finding family members, bribing officials, and seeing the story of people ravaged by the turmoil in the country. Moreso, it has three strong performances and gives the characters time to talk and reveal their backgrounds. Some things seemed odd to me, Archer returns to the area after visiting his current employer and is shown talking to Vandy and we have no idea how he found him. A romance between Archer and Bowen develops, though not in the typical Hollywood way and even though the script goes to some efforts to explain how that might be, and the performances are good, it didn't quite seem genuine to me.

I really enjoyed this film. It starts off very strong and is filled with action, intrigue, and social commentary. The flaws are somewhat slight but keeps it at a very good instead of a great rating. Still, it was worth the time and money to see it.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Sorry for not posting in a while. Every day I am improving. At this point I'm pretty good, I can open my mouth normally, my ear only hurts occasionally, I only take Tylenol a couple of times a day. My right jaw is still swollen to the touch but much less so than before. I'm at the state now where I feel pretty good but things happen that make me realize healing takes time. I'm able to eat pretty normally but can't take large bites and after chewing for a while my jaw hurts. Friday afternoon I sneezed a couple of times and that was not pleasant but today (Sunday) it's not so bad.

I saw the oral surgeon last Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and will see him again tomorrow. He's been good at monitoring me. I also saw my primary care physician on Friday just to check. He concurred that everything seemed ok and progress was good. The part that bothered me was the mystery about what had occurred and the idea seems to be some bacteria got in and settled in the soft tissue and caused an infection. The antibiotics are working, it's just a matter of waiting.

I also wondered how bad this would have been 200 years ago. They used to pull teeth, you just drank a lot to dull the pain. Infections were still around (and cleanliness wasn't nearly what it was, unless the alcohol helped) but there weren't antibiotics. My guess is, this would have turned out much different.

I wrote in May that William Jefferson (D-LA) was corrupt and wondered what he was still doing in Congress. Remember all that stuff about the raid on his office being illegal because of the separation of powers? Turns out in July a judge ruled it was a legal search, good. But I can't find anything about the investigation since then. Can no investigation in Washington finish? They have they guy on videotape accepting the bribe and found the money in his freezer! Somehow Jefferson won reelection this term and now the Democrats have to figure out what to do with him. Now we see Pelosi May Give Jefferson a Lesser Committee Assignment or hopefully no committee assignment.

The 109th Congress (sucked and) failed to pass 9 of 11 spending bills and did basically nothing fiscally, leaving it for the 110th. The Democrats plan to concentrate on other priorities and will (I think this is the right term) agree to a year-long spending resolution. So the budget won't be resolved until the fiscal year ends but will continue on autopilot. This has the downside that things continue so some programs get squeezed but the upside the the earmark program which has turned into a pork buffet (bridge to nowhere) is stopped. "It's not a good way to do budgeting over the long term" but it seems good for the short term. I guess something favored by conservative Republicans and The Concord Coalition must be interesting.

Then it became more complicated. It turns out the initial report was from an op-ed by "the well-connected Saudi analyst, Nawaf Obaid" which wasn't official policy and the Saudi's said so. "The Saudi Press Agency quickly issued a statement from an unnamed 'official source' saying that Obaid's op-ed 'does not represent any official Saudi authority.'" and "the outgoing Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, terminated Obaid's consultancy with the Saudi Embassy." Then the New York Times and Washington Post reported that this was policy and that Saudi's told Cheney that on his recent visit there.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Happy Feet is a fun animated film that reminds you of March of the Penguins. In fact, having scene that movie helps explain some of the hardships in a penguin's life that this movie just assumes. There are a bunch of musical numbers with many many penguins and they are a lot of fun. It's also a story of someone not fitting in and finding their way. There's actually a little more depth to the story than I expected. Oh and did I mention the penguins are really really cute?

Still the story takes kinda of an odd turn towards the end. It works but I found it unexpected and I'm not sure I liked it. Something else bothered me too. In the film emperor penguins all sing to express themselves but our star dances instead of singing. The other penguins find his dancing bizarre and ostracize him. But in the big musical numbers they all seem to be dancing. Another thing that bothered me was that the camera was constantly moving, sometimes very fast. I'm ok with this occasionally, but not constantly. Now I did see it in IMAX so sometimes the motion made for some good effects, but it was still a bit too much.

Anyway, the music makes up for most things and the penguins be so damn cute makes up for the rest. This is a fun film, well worth seeing. If you have small kids I don't think it's as scary as Finding Nemo. There are a couple of scenes reminiscent of the sharks in Nemo but they aren't quite as scary perhaps because they are seals and killer whales.

Here's a crazy site, Will It Blend. A guy puts odd stuff in a blender and turns it on. Various videos that are pretty amusing divided into two categories: Try at Home, Don't Try at Home. E.g., here's one of him blending an iPod.

I'm definitely doing better today. The swelling is down and I can open my mouth much more easily. I think as a result of that, the pain is down. Haven't had a Vicodin in 24 hours, though I am taking Tylenol. So it seems the antibiotics are working, hopefully things just continue getting better.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

and he's doing something about it. If bloggers become responsible for tracking the comments people leave most will shut down. And since when can't convicted sex offenders have political opinions? I must not get this, because it sounds too stupid.

"Until now Saudi officials have promised their counterparts in the United States that they would refrain from aiding Iraq's Sunni insurgency. But that pledge holds only as long as the United States remains in Iraq. The Saudis have been wary of supporting Sunnis in Iraq because their insurgency there has been led by extremists of Al Qaeda, who are opposed to the kingdom's monarchy. But if Iraq's sectarian war worsened, the Saudis would line up with Sunni tribal leaders."

Maybe the Saudi's should send troops into Iraq to help keep the peace? That makes about as much sense as us trying to do it.

When I can fly again can I bring my toiletries on board? I know they claim that hydrogen peroxide can be used as a bomb, but it turns out it's not as easy as they make it sound, if it's even possible at all.

Can we just stop with the fake security measures and invading the wrong countries and actually go after the real terrorists? Maybe then we'll regain some of the respect we had in September 2001 and our "allies" like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would actually help us capture terrorists because it's the right thing to do.

This is a really interesting presentation that's well worth watching. TED is an annual exclusive conference of brilliant people exchanging potentially brilliant ideas. This presentation is from the 2006 conference. Hans Rosling is a Swedish professor of International Health and a co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999).

He also co-founded Gapminder, a non-profit organization "for development and provision of free software that visualise human development." They're also trying to make access to such data (as from the UN) much easier than it currently is. Check out the presentation, the graphics that they have for showing the data (such as world health and income) are really well done, even Tufte found them interesting.

If you're really into world data or statistical visualizations you may get more out of this 1 hour version of the talk given at Google by Hans' his son and Gapminder co-founder Ola Rosling. The one problem with both of them is they blur being about the data, that is the condition of people, and about the presentation, that is the software and sources of the data. You can download some of the software from gapminder.org and play with it yourself. Cool stuff.

I went back to the oral surgeon today. The office was crowded at 9am but I had no wait. The receptionist knew me and as soon as I took my coat off the nurse brought me in. I worried that I was the possible malpractice patient.

He asked how I was and I said no worse and maybe just a little bit better. I can open my mouth a little bit more than I could Wed. He agreed. Again there wasn't any swelling inside my mouth. Well actually there was just a little by my tongue on that side which happened right after dinner last night. He took another full mouth x-ray and it looked clean. No bone spurs or anything. He rinsed out the extraction site and there was a little more stuff there than he expected. Hard to say what it was, pus or just food stuffs. He tapped on the other teeth and they were fine (didn't hurt). So based on this, he was thinking of opening up the gum on the tongue side and looking for an infection site to clean out.

At this point I'm thinking how I could politely ask for a copy of the x-rays to get a second opinion. The surgeon seemed knowledgeable but he also seemed stumped. I wanted Dr. House. Well I think to his credit he brought in his associate in the practice for a consult. He looked at the x-ray and also thought it looked good. He examined me and came to similar conclusions, but suggested waiting a little bit before opening the tongue side.

I asked what the possibilities were and they said "We know you have an infection". But usually there's some swelling inside the mouth and someplace to drain. I don't have swelling inside my mouth and what I do have seems very localized in the lymph node. So they don't know where the infection site is. I asked what possible next steps would be and they said a CT scan to find the infection site. I said "so we wait to see if something comes up to avoid an expensive test but that's the fallback", and he said yes.

So I have an appointment on Friday for another look. My guess is I'll be in a similar position and then will get a CT scan. I assume at some other site and it will be a while to make an appointment and I probably can't do it over the weekend. Sigh. If anyone has any advice or comments I'd love to hear them.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Cenk Uygur has a gift of putting the situation in simple terms. In his lastest post he asks Can Anyone Define a Military Victory in Iraq? Simply put, if the problem is building an Iraq that can defend itself, "Who do we want our army to kill? What land do we want them to conquer? What military battle do we want them to win? No one in America can answer this question. And yet, we keep sending our men and women into the middle of this quagmire for this inherently non-military mission." There's a lot more there, read his post.

Now what I want to know is why can't the White House press corps ever ask either Tony Snow or President Bush such similar questions. Why can't they ask him to explain the difference between insurgent violence and a civil war? Why can't they ask "What are you doing to realize the political victories we need?" or "How do you expect the military to achieve the political compromises needed?" But I haven't heard them ask such questions. And of course there aren't any good answers.

So Rumsfeld isn't even out of his job yet and he's already back peddling. Now he's saying "I don't think I would have called it [Iraq] the war on terror". Brilliant. He freely admits he's used the term himself (and of course Think Progress has a list. But Rumsfeld does apparently have some things right:

"But the military, given the nature of this conflict, can't win alone. There is no way the military can prevail, because what we are engaged in, in a very real sense, is a battle of ideas (and) a struggle within the Muslim faith between the overwhelming majority of mainstream Muslims and a relatively small minority of violent extremists who have access to all the modern technology [and weapons]."

I think his problem is that he also believes the violence in Iraq is a few extremists, aka terrorists, instead of a fundamental difference between ethnic groups that hate each other.

Rumsfeld does understand that adding more troops can feed the insurgency and build Iraqi troop dependency on US troops. So there are reasons not to add more troops, it could make things worse. Maybe he's catching up to the rest of us afterall. Apparently Bush has largely decided his new Iraq policy and while he hasn't dropped any hints, rumors are that he'll do something stupid. My problem is that Bush could actually do something that is stupid, as opposed to Tom DeLay who now is just saying stupid stuff. "It's the fault of the liberals and the media and the Democrats, that from the very beginning have tried to undermine the will of the American people to fight this."

It's hard to know but I think I'm feeling a little better. It was still hard opening my mouth to eat this morning it seemed a little easier at dinner. I still need the Vicodin but the swelling seems to be going down a bit. It was always hard to see, but touching it tonight it seems a little smaller. The antibiotics must be working. While I didn't think my nose was at all stuffed, shortly after taking them my nose is very very clear. The Ciprofloxacin is a oblong pill I take every 12 hours, no biggie. The Metronidazole is a medium sized round pill that tastes awful. I take it three times a day and to avoid a foul chalky taste I now put a little water in my mouth first and then add the pill and swallow as fast as I can.

I'm not sure which pill is doing it but I'm drowsy during the day. That's the reason for not too many blog posts. Hopefully it's the Vicodin and that will stop as soon as the swelling goes down. The antibiotics go on for 8 and 10 days to complete the course. I go back to the dentist tomorrow morning at 9am, so I should know a little more then.

Tonight I made a Pureed Green Onion Soup I learned in my soup class. It came out pretty well and was easy to make.

In a large pot I sauteed in a little olive oil: 3 bunches of scallions, 3 leeks and 3 yellow onions, all chopped coarsely though I probably cut them smaller than needed. That was a lot of onions in the pot but eventually they started to soften and kinda turn translucent.

I added 5 cloves of garlic I put through a garlic press and sauteed a little longer.

I added 6 cups of (homemade) vegetable stock, 2 diced potatoes, some sprigs of thyme and a little white wine. I brought this up to a boil then lowered the heat and simmered for 30 mins for all the veges to get soft. I didn't peel the potatoes but next time I will, so they puree a little better.

I removed the thyme twigs (don't want to puree them) and then came the always fun immersion blender. Salt and pepper to taste, actually, instead of salt I used Better than Boullion which I learned to think of as flavored salt.

In class we made this and also another version that used red onions and shallots instead of the leeks and scallions. It was also good but had quite a different flavor. Have fun experimenting.

Mac Heist is offering 10 mac applications, normally priced at close to $300 for only $49. Usually these collections aren't the best apps, but this one includes Delicious Library, DEVONthink Personal, NewsFire and TextMate. Those all all apps I know (I have and love Delicious Library) are high quality. It also includes FotoMagico and RapidWeaver which don't seem cheap. ShapeShifter, Disco, iClip4, and a Pangea game round out the list. Oh and 25% of the sale goes to a charity of your choice (of 8 they list). Goodo Stuffo.

Before you ask, yes I'm tempted. I already have Delicious so that doesn't interest me. I've been thinking about TextMate but I don't have that much use for it and have 25 years of Emacs experience. I use the free Vienna over NewsFire. DEVONthink is an interesting choice among many outliners that have intrigued me but I suspect I probably wouldn't use that much. The others I suspect I won't use either. But I still might get these.

The arguments in this case have been called some of the most interesting in quite some time. In the case, a Seattle school district considered the race of the students in deciding placement amongst schools in order to achieve racially diverse schools. Some parents denied the first choice of schools for their students claim this is discrimination based solely on race. So this is basically an affirmative action case (though even that is something that came up in the arguments).

Cenk Uygur has a good post called Victory Monkeys. My favorite part: "Have you ever heard of a neoconservative plumber? The neo-clowns have absolutely no voting base. Why people continue to listen to them as if they represent real people in the real world is beyond me."

I went back to the oral surgeon today. He saw the swelling immediately and checked out my mouth, as much as I could open it. Everything at the extraction site looked ok, there was no swelling in my mouth and "nothing to drain". He tapped on the other teeth and that didn't make me writhe in agony or anything. He said it didn't match "dry socket" situation. It all seems to be a swollen lymph node under my jaw. He prescribed some antibiotics (Ciprofloxacin and Metronidazole) and I have another appointment on Wed. The antibiotics should take affect in a day or two. I picked them up along with some more generic Vicodin at the pharmacist for $100. So more sitting...

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Here are two articles (one and two) on the last acts of the worst Congress in memory. They extended some tax breaks, reformed the post office, extended trade benefits to Vietnam, four Andean nations, sub-Saharan African countries and Haiti.

"Republicans dumped an unfinished budget on the Democrats about to take power, with the Senate barely meeting a midnight deadline to pass a stopgap spending bill putting the government on autopilot until Feb. 15. Bush quickly signed the bill on Saturday. The failure to pass budget bills for domestic agencies, said Rep. David Obey (D-WI) amounted to 'a blatant admission of abject failure by the most useless Congress in modern times.'"

Ugh. So my mouth has gotten worse each day since I my tooth extracted. The swelling hit and and it wasn't that noticeable and still isn't, but if you touch it there's still a big difference from one side of my jaw to the other. Though that's getting less now as the swelling is starting to reach the other side. I'm on the Vicodin all the time now and the swelling is preventing me from opening my mouth very far. Eating is now a bit of a challenge as I have to carefully position the fork to fit between my teeth as far as I can open them. I tried to look in the mirror at the hole where my tooth was, but couldn't open my mouth far enough. I'll be going back to the dentist tomorrow, I'm not sure how he's going to see the hole, but I imagine it won't be pleasant.

I don't think I have an infection as I don't have a fever. The most common complication is known as dry socket which is when the clot is removed and while the symptoms kinda match what I'm feeling I didn't do any of the things that are supposed to make it more likely (smoke, alcohol, use a straw, spit, etc.). And the doctor saw me on Wed and said everything was fine.

I cancelled my trip to Dallas today. My jaw hurts when I stand up from the couch, I can't imagine what changing pressure would be like. On the one bright side, I've lost weight and am now at a new low :)

Ugh. So my mouth has gotten worse each day since I my tooth extracted. The swelling hit and and it wasn't that noticeable and still isn't, but if you touch it there's still a big difference from one side of my jaw to the other. Though that's getting less now as the swelling is starting to reach the other side. I'm on the Vicodin all the time now and the swelling is preventing me from opening my mouth very far. Eating is now a bit of a challenge as I have to carefully position the fork to fit between my teeth as far as I can open them. I tried to look in the mirror at the hole where my tooth was, but couldn't open my mouth far enough. I'll be going back to the dentist tomorrow, I'm not sure how he's going to see the hole, but I imagine it won't be pleasant.

I don't think I have an infection as I don't have a fever. The most common complication is known as dry socket which is when the clot is removed and while the symptoms kinda match what I'm feeling I didn't do any of the things that are supposed to make it more likely (smoke, alcohol, use a straw, spit, etc.). And the doctor saw me on Wed and said everything was fine.

I cancelled my trip to Dallas today. My jaw hurts when I stand up from the couch, I can't imagine what changing pressure would be like. On the one bright side, I've lost weight and am now at a new low :)

Oh and check out what we did with North Korea this week. "The United States has offered a detailed package of economic and energy assistance in exchange for North Korea’s giving up nuclear weapons and technology." This is exactly the policy that Bush said we shouldn't do for six years. Yep guess he was wrong. And the only thing that happened is that North Korea became a nuclear power. No biggie.

Weldon Angelos was sentenced in Utah to 55 years in prison for "small-time marijuana and gun charges". "Mr. Angelos is a first-time offender who sold $350 in marijuana to a government informant three times -- and carried, but did not display, a gun on two of those occasions. Police found other guns and pot at his house." This week, the US Supreme Court declined to review Angelos' case.

The sentencing judge, Paul G. Cassell, was appointed by Bush and is known to be convservative. He "declared the mandatory sentence in this case 'unjust, cruel, and even irrational.' He noted that it is 'far in excess of the sentence imposed for such serious crimes as aircraft hijacking, second degree murder, espionage, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and rape.'...And in an extraordinary act, he explicitly called on Mr. Bush to use his clemency powers to offer what he as a judge could not: justice." Bush has only commutted two sentences so far in his presidency.

This makes me sick. "Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday he would lift his hold on a federal judicial nominee if she agrees to step aside from any case dealing with same-sex unions." At least he's honest about selling his vote for a Judge.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Here's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Blackberry addiction. It takes the approach of children complaining that their parents are always using the devices and not paying attention to them. I used to use a Palm Pilot a lot but it wasn't wireless so there was no need to constantly check it. And I started using email when it was only accessible at work, I didn't have a computer at home until 2000. I guess I learned how to deal with too much email and how to avoid it, before having the added factor of having it portable and always with me.

I remember going to the beach with a few friends one day. One was a doctor on call who brought a cell phone. Of course she got a call and took some patient info over the phone and gave some instructions and then had to go into the hospital. At the time I said I never wanted to be that connected, but I realized that before cellphones she never would have been able to go to the beach while on call at all. Being connected does give you more flexibility but of course it also means that you're never away from work. There are lots of articles on this now and I'm sure in the next few years people are going to learn to just say no. For the most part, there's very little business stuff that can't wait a few hours if not a few days. But if you're trapped in that mentality, I'm sure reading that last sentence has made you say "you just don't understand".

Thursday, December 07, 2006

My recovery is going pretty well. I've been quite drowsy the past couple of days but the pain less. I'm off the Vicodin and just on Tylenol. I think my face looks normal but if I feel my jaw, there is a noticeable bulge on one side. Most of the pain seems to be in the molar 2 in front of the extracted tooth. I assume it's just where in the nerve the swelling is affecting me.

I'm not quite sure how they managed this, but the bill was delivered in the next day's mail. I don't have dental insurance and when I asked they said an extraction was $300-500 depending on the difficultly and sometimes medical insurance covered it. That seemed pretty reasonable. The bill was for $750 and the medical insurance portion was $0. It turns out it was an easy extraction, only $325 and medical insurance doesn't cover it because the tooth wasn't completely under the gum line. The procedure is the same, but these are their rules. The additional $425 was the anesthesia (including an additional unit for $125). When they ask if you want anesthesia and say it's entirely up to you, they don't tell you it will double the bill.

I know I have posted yet on the Iraq report released this week but I honestly can't figure out what to say. Some reports say it was damning for the President, well yeah, but everyone knew that already, this was what, just making it official? And Bush in the press conference remade history saying he's been saying it bad in Iraq. McCain wants to know why his idea of increasing troops a little wasn't considered. It just all strikes me as theater until we start actually pulling troops out next year. Get on with it already.

This is fun, the FBI can apparently remotely turn on the microphone on your cellphone and listen to what it picks up. This ability was used in an organized crime case in NY. Depending on the phone it could potentially work even when the phone is off, the only way to prevent it is to remove the battery.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Sorry for the lack of posts today. I had a wisdom tooth removed this morning and so far all is well. As usual, I learned a few things and I figure I'd share.

As a kid I had 4 teeth removed for braces, but I don't really remember that. I never had my wisdom teeth removed as my mother believed that you keep your teeth until there's a problem. My lower ones were impacted, meaning they grew forward into the tooth in front of them which prevented them from growing all the way in. They did grow in most of the ways, but they just don't do much except trap food so I have to be careful cleaning them. The lower ones are near the nerve and my current dentist agreed that the risk of nerve damage outweighed the benefit of removing these before something happened. I also learned that the risk increases as you age, so it probably would have been better to have them removed as kid. An x-ray showed I now have a cavity forming in the tooth in front so it's time to remove the wisdom tooth to get to it easily.

A few years ago I had a top wisdom tooth develop another cavity and had it pulled. I was surprised at how easy an experience it was. I went to an oral surgeon, had some Lidocaine (they don't use novacaine much anymore but still say it because most people know that word) and a short man with Popeye-like forearms used pliers and pulled a tooth out of my head. The whole thing took about 15 minutes, mostly waiting for the Lidocaine to take effect.

Apparently unlike the top ones, lower wisdom teeth are near a nerve. What they do is surgically open the gum, I think break the tooth in two, remove it and it just sounded much more involved. As a result I decided to have anethesia for this instead of just Lidocaine. It was my first time for anethesia. I had a hernia a few years ago and even for that they used a local and some medication that put me to sleep but not under (my own terms which I'm sure are imprecise). Afterwards I spoke to a doctor friend of mine who told me that most complications that come from anethesia happen in dentist's offices, so in the future I might make a different decision. The risk is low, but still, why take it?

I went to the oral surgeon a while ago for the initial consulatation. They took a cool full head x-ray. I previously had what I think they call bite wings where put a small piece of time in a holder inside your mouth that you bite down on to hold in place. I find it always just a little uncomfortable, almost gagging but not quite. Then of course the dentist leaves the room as short x-ray burst captures the image. This machine was different. You sit in a chair and a machine rotates 360° around your head taking one picture of your whole jaw. It looks like this. The consultation was a little weak. He actually said to me that it's the same speech to everyone and there's a small risk of permanent numbness and there's no way to know ahead of time. I know one person with a permanent dime-sized numb spot on his chin, I guess you get used to it. The tooth looked close to nerve but that doesn't correlate to problems developing. I told him as an engineer I'm used to make decisions on facts and doing some risk analysis on someone quantitative and he was giving me nothing, but so be it.

The most difficult part for me was that if you have anethesia you need to have someone pick you up and stay with you for 24 hours. Arranging that was little difficult and caused me to delay the procedure a while. Anyway it was today and in the mean time the surgeon I met left the practice so I switched to another oral surgeon in the same practice who was also recommended to me. He was more personable and said that complications are more common if the tooth is still completely under the gumline, which wasn't the case for me. That made me feel a little better.

They hooked me up to blood pressure, pulse and O2 monitors and gave me small mask with oxygen . Then they gave me an IV with the drug. It's funny, I remember then hearing that the procedure was over and after looking at my watch I commented that that was fast, but I think at the time I thought I remembered the procedure, but now I don't at all. Anyway I was a little groggy and waited in teh chair for 30 mins in part for my head to clear (and for them to monitor me) and in part waiting for my ride who had another appointment in the same building. Most reactions to the anethesia will happen shortly afterwards.

They gave me a prescription for Vicodin and I stopped at CVS on the way home to fill it. A simple prescription for 24 pills, why does it take 15 mins to fill it ? There was no one else there and no one else came in the mean time to pick up a prescription. I guess so I could wander around the store and buy some ice cream, which I did (Cherry Garcia). The surgeon's office also gave me preprinted instructions for things to do. They were all generic but I've been icing my face on and off again to help with the swelling. So far so good but they said it will peak after 2 days and will persist for 5-7 days.

So for all this you have someone stay with you for 24 I had asked the nurse (assistant?) what should they look for, that seems a reasonable question. The answer was anything out of the ordinary, which I find to be completely useless. You don't want to call unnecessarily and they shouldn't want to have to waste their time. After the office closes is out-of-the-ordinary the same as the "in the event of an emergency" that I know I'll hear if I call their number? It's known stuff, the anethesia and the Vicodin, they must know what the side effects were.

So a friend staying here this afternoon told me to not fall behind in the Vicodin, apparently once you feel pain it's too late and hard to catch up. I hadn't heard that before and decided to call a doctor friend to chat and ask. It turns out that's kinda true. This kind of pain medication apparently first "covers" the pain and only after you'er pain-free would side effects kick in. So the idea of "wait until you can't stand it" before taking pain meds is to avoid side effects because that point all the meds will go to treat pain and not give side-effects. But of course, then you're in pain and they take 15-30 mins to take effect so you don't know for a while if you've taken enough. The other theory is to take it before you feel pain to avoid it all, but of course then you have a hard time to avoid taking too much for side effects.

Also from what I understand the prescription is for limited amount so you can't get addicted. Only you can judge your own pain. Taking an extra one if you need it should be fine and you'd need to take a lot for any serious side effects. Taking a whole bottle would bad. (I'm not a doctor so don't do anything stupid, the above is not advice). The common side effects are nausia, light headedness, etc. The one thing that's apparently still possible for me is for it to slows my breathing and I evidently wouldn't notice that myself. So that's what my friend is looking out for. Would it have been so hard to tell me that in the office? I know all the pre-printed forms are to avoid lawsuits and all that, but it's just so moronic that the way they do that is to be so generic (call for anything out-of-the-ordinary) as to be less than helpful.

Another thing that was a little annoying. I had prepared for this by buying soft foodand making soup this weekend. Soup is soft. I even made my own vegetable stock. The carrot and parsnip soup came out well though a little thin. It will be better next time. I also picked up some fresh pasta from my favorite local market. Before dismissing the nurse said I could eat anything, just chew on the other side, and I should avoid hot foods like coffee, tea, and soup because they promote bleeding. Wouldn't it have been nice to tell me this ahead of time so I could have prepared properly? Oh well, warm homemade carrot and parsnip soup is still pretty tasty.

Anyway, I'm fine. i went through various stages of lower jaw numbness but that seems mostly past. My jaw hurts a little on that side but between the Vicodin and the ice it's not bad at all. Dinner was tasty and apparently my breathing isn't slow. And I can still write way-to-long blog posts. :)

The Washington Post reports Lame-Duck Congress May Run Out the Clock. They're not even showing up. Congress was in session just one week in November and will be just one week this month. "That will mean this Congress will have spent the least time in session of any in at least half a century." And those numbers inflate the time they worked. "On nine of its 'workdays' this year, the House held not a single vote -- meeting for less than eleven minutes. The Senate managed to top the House's feat, pulling off three workdays this year that lasted less than one minute."

" In the time they have met, lawmakers have failed to approve a budget resolution or pass at least eight of the 11 annual spending bills." And I guess I'm happy they didn't pass any significant piece of legislation. But my favorite line in the article is: "Lawmakers were forced to vacate their offices on Friday, and few of them want to hang around Washington with no place to sit."

If you haven't read the Rolling Stone article take a look. It describes the child-like behavior of the Republican majority. Literally not telling Democrats where meetings are, turning out the lights on Democrat meetings, and when there is a rare bipartisan agreement, they swap out the bill for the final vote. This Congress has only allowed one non-appropriations bill to be open to the possibility of amendments and without the ability to change a bill, there is no meaningful debate. Did you know that "the 109th is known as the "Dracula" Congress: Twenty bills have been brought to a vote between midnight and 7 a.m." It goes on and on with more horrifying things. I learned that Randy "Duke" Cunningham writes as badly as Lindsey Lohan.

The Washington Post has an op-ed today by Eric Foner, a professor of History at Columbia. He concludes by saying "I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history."

He cites that presidents Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon usually end up at the bottom of rankings of the presidents. He then lists their failings, in short, stubborness in the face of failed policies, corruption and cronyism, disdain for the Constitution, etc.

"It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. "

Friday, December 01, 2006

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrinch spoke Monday night at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award dinner in Manchester, NH. He said we may need to reexamine the right of free speech to fight terrorism. Keith Olbermann responds...